How do human needs and wants impact the natural environment?

Kennedy Osterman
Blog Post
A2 Personal Finance

We have our basic human needs food, water, and shelter. People nowadays are apart of a materialistic and consumer-based environment to meet these wants there are factories built to mass-produce products that people want. With the increase in the number of factories, there is an increase in pollution. Factories are a major contributing factor to water pollution across the globe. With all the illegal dumping of gases, contaminated water, chemicals, and heavy metals into waterways then affect marine life and the environment as a whole.

As humans when we go to the store we want paper towels, chocolate, gum, milk, etc. When shopping we want new clothes like jeans every so often. For Christmas and birthdays, we want objects like legos, bowling balls, clothes, food. All of those items come from factories and the more we want and buy the more they will make cause the need for more factories to produce and more pollution because of the increase in factories.

Not only with everyday items but with everyday food. According to Food Empowerment Project: “4.5 percent of all human-induced emissions play an important role in climate change with beef and cow milk production accounting for the majority of emissions”. Fast food has been a big part of humans everyday life from grabbing a quick bite before work or being too lazy to cook dinner. The way our world works today and the way that it is going to in the future is a scary thought. Knowing how much technology is changing and making improvements will allow fewer jobs for people. It will create more factories and more waste. People are coming up with new inventions every year and sooner or later there will be self-driven cars making us even lazier. Adding more fast-food restaurants and more trash being put in the ocean. Despite all the negative going on, little by little people are coming up with ways for us to impact the environment for the better. At lunch, we throw out our food away in correct bins (trash, recycling, compost). In our classrooms or public places there’s the use of trash cans and recycling bins. People don’t like paying much for their electricity bill. Making sure that we shut off lights in rooms we are not in can help that. We have kids enjoy riding with others, so carpooling with others to save gas. All these positives are slowly getting more people inspired to create change. However, we still have a lot of negatives and the big reason for that is because people are buying their wants and needs but not realizing how much they are impacting the environment.

Works Cited

“Fast Food.” Food Empowerment Project, Food Empowerment Project, 2019, foodispower.org/access-health/fast-food/.

McFadden, Christopher. “11 Factory Processes Used to Make Some of Your Favorite Products.” Interesting Engineering, Interesting Engineering, 25 June 2018, interestingengineering.com/11-factory-processes-used-to-make-some-of-your-favorite-products.